Technical Field
The present disclosure generally relates to cell capture, disruption, and extraction, and more particularly, to a device and method for receiving, isolating, and preparing cell lysate and extraction of specific cell content such as nucleic acid, proteins, lipid and the like.
Description of the Related Art
Typical starting materials for genomics or proteomics assays are biological samples. These samples could include, among others, plant or animal tissue, cultured bacteria, yeast, algae, blood and/or other bodily fluids. To extract any part of the cellular components from these samples, the cells are typically removed from media in which they exist, such as growth or storage solution, or otherwise concentrated into a small volume. The cell membrane and/or cell walls are then broken to expose its content (lysis). Some cells may have a thin membrane that can be broken by simply exposing them to chaotropic salts such as guanidinium thiocyanate. Other cells, such as plant and single cell blue green algae, have thicker cell membranes or additional cell walls, making them difficult to break. Bacteria spores such as bacillus, subtilis or anthracis form strong bacteria spores, which are also difficult to break.
Furthermore, typically a targeted material, which can be DNA, RNA, Protein, lipids, or other cellular material, is extracted through methods such as affinity columns from prepared cell lysate.
Existing methods to perform the steps above are carried out using distinct individual tools and kits performing these steps separately, and their technologies for performing these steps do not lend to performing combination-processing steps. For example, filter membranes are used to separate the cells from its surrounding media. Harsh chemical, heat, Sonication, Freeze/Thaw and/or bead beating are used to break cells open.
Commercially available filters currently used for cell separation or concentration purposes, are slow and eventually clog. Furthermore, existing devices typically collect cells from the filter, then remove it and move it to a separate lysis tube. This transport can be prone to handling errors and contamination, is labor intensive, and reduces overall lysis yield and quality.
Therefore, existing devices consume excess time and expense to perform complete sample preparation and target material extraction, and are prone to contamination and/or destruction of intracellular components being sought. Furthermore, existing methods may not be reproducible; may be applicable to only one of small scale or large scale processing; can exhibit high noise levels, yield variability, and generation of free radicals; can only be applicable to easily breakable cells; may not work with microorganisms; are slow and susceptible to clogging; and/or require expensive, complicated, super high speed breakup mechanism, and/or be prone to contaminating external elements.